


Something is Killing the Androids

by Manuscriptor



Series: What Lives in the Sewers [1]
Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Android Gore (Detroit: Become Human), Body Horror, Gen, basically it's horror genre that i wanted to write okay, big warning, seriously with the gore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-03
Updated: 2019-12-03
Packaged: 2021-02-26 01:42:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,449
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21655441
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Manuscriptor/pseuds/Manuscriptor
Summary: There is something in the sewers, and it's killing androids.Something with a too-long face, too many arms, and one eye too many. Something that might be an android and something that might not be.Something is killing the androids, and it just found its next victim.
Series: What Lives in the Sewers [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1561228
Comments: 3
Kudos: 7





	Something is Killing the Androids

Everyone knew about the sewers. 

Nobody knew what was in the sewers. 

Everybody just knew about the bodies that washed out of the pipes and into the drainage chutes. The water at the edge of town ran blue before the thirium could evaporate and after dark was a time to pull a hat down over your LED or stay inside altogether. 

Something was in the sewers and no one knew what it was. 

There were stories, of course. Rumors about androids with faces too long and eyes that rolled in their sockets. Androids that jerked and stuttered when they moved like they were old arcade machines, and androids that looked just a little too off when you studied them more than a glance. It kept everyone on their toes, and nobody talked about the growing body count. 

Lane had joined Jericho late in the revolution. 

He had missed all the fighting and the petitions for rights and all the hard work. He had woken up at his job at a weather station with a beautiful android smiling and pulling him away from the cameras he was supposed to be handling. 

The beautiful android had been Markus, and the rest was mostly history that hadn’t made it into the books yet. 

Lane had the luxury of simply walking into a world that accepted him. Mostly. It took him a while to get used to living in his own apartment. He had never had this much time on his hands and quickly took up Markus’s suggestion of painting and other creative hobbies. Lane barely knew his way around a canvas, but there was something satisfying about getting the color all over himself and the paper. 

Lane was tall, skinny, and blonde with pink eyes. He was supposed to fall into the background, and with color on his skin, he felt more alive than anything ever. 

Lane didn’t usually go out at night, but he had had to run to the store for yellow paint. He had been struck with the urge to make the sun and now his apartment walls were every shade of orange and red. He wanted to match. It was something stupid and personal that he focused on. Lane didn’t know many of the other androids and he tended to keep to himself. 

Lane knew about the sewers and all the rumors that came with them. 

Normally, he would have taken the long way home, but he was in a hurry, fingers itching to open the bottles he had purchased and complete his manic obsession. Maybe that’s why he didn’t notice where he was stepping and why his shoe caught on the lip of a storm grate and he stumbled. 

Lane didn’t go down. He was an android with impeccable balance. He had been made to never fall down. 

But he did happen to glance back over his shoulder and see the flicker of a yellow LED flash on the other side of the metal, and in an instant, he was captivated. 

He forgot about the rumors for a moment as he crouched down and pressed his face to the storm grate, trying to get a better look at the LED. He squinted into the dark, seeing nothing but shadows for several long moments. Maybe he had imagined it. Maybe he had been so eager to get home and get back to his colors that he had fabricated something that wasn’t there. 

A moment later, he gathered his shopping bags and pushed himself back to his feet, giving up on it. His mind must be playing tricks. He should get home anyway. 

He only got a couple steps before the scrape of metal on concrete made him freeze. 

He turned, immediately spotting the way that the storm drain was now pushed aside. The hole to the sewers yawned open, black and hungry and empty and full at the same time. Lane was captivated. He had never seen anything so black and evil before, not even in his worst nightmares. It was so opposite of yellow that he wanted to stare at it forever.

Normally, Lane would never fall down. He had sensors throughout his entire body designed to keep himself steady and, at the same time, keep cameras steady. 

Lane had never fallen in his entire life. 

His chest hit the ground hard when a hand snapped out of the darkness and grabbed him by the ankle, giving his entire body a sharp yank. 

He was being dragged before he could react, his paints tumbling out of his grasp and everything suddenly too slippery to be any good. He scrambled to get a hold of something. Anything. His fingers briefly caught on the edge of the drain hole and then he was plunging down into the dark without any control over his fall. 

Lane had never fallen in his entire life.

He landed on his back and nearly knocked every organ in himself out of alignment. It took a moment of lying there, head spinning, before everything inside of him righted itself and Lane was able to roll to his feet. It took another moment before he was able to get enough breath inside of himself to speak.

“Hello?” he asked the darkness around him. 

The drain hole was impossibly out of reach. Above his head. Lane didn’t have anything to climb and he didn’t know how to climb either. He wasn’t made to see in the dark, and his problem solving skills were definitely lacking. 

He peered into the dark, trying to catch sight of anything that could help him. 

An LED spun yellow. 

It was the only thing that Lane could focus on. 

Lane almost didn’t recognize the thing that stepped out of the shadows as an android. 

Its skin was pulled back, its muted grey-white plastic skeleton showing, and most of its features had been cracked or dented. It was way too tall and way too skinny, skinnier than Lane. It looked like it was two androids stacked on top of each other. Long legs kept the thing upright, three different knee joints in each bending and swaying dangerously. Like it would break any moment. 

The thing was smiling at him. 

“I need to get up there,” Lane said, pointing up at the round circle of light that made it through the hole. 

The android didn’t say anything. Its LED spun yellow. 

“I need. . . . to leave,” Lane tried. “I need to get out.” 

The android still said nothing. 

Lane didn’t dare turn his back on it but he did take a step back, testing what the android liked and didn’t. When there was no reaction, he took another step. And then another. He made his way slowly back, feeling for a wall behind him to guide him where he was going. 

When the android did move, its joints clicked like it was a clock. It was obvious that it had been cobbled together, and when it moved, that was the most obvious. Its eyes didn’t leave Lane. It tip-toed forward, like it was stalking him and doing a horrible job of it. But with Lane still keeping an eye on it, the android didn’t seem to want to attack. 

Just yet. 

And then Lane made the mistake of looking away. 

His foot had slipped on something, and while he easily maintained his balance and didn’t even have to catch the wall to stay on his feet, he glanced down instinctively to see what he had slipped on and how he could avoid it. 

The android moved faster than should be possible. With creaking joints and cobbled body parts, Lane would have guessed it didn’t have the ability to cover short distances so quickly. But the moment his eyes left it, the android surged forward. 

Lane felt the hands on his legs first, dragging down and slamming his entire body against the stone. It made all his systems go haywire and by the time he reoriented himself, the android was leering over him with a wide smile splitting its face. 

It cracked open its mouth and the organs inside gurgling in a sort of growl. The poor thing had to barely be functioning at all, if it was making noises like that. Its insides must be swimming in thirium, internal bleeding that it couldn’t stop or heal. Lane almost felt bad. 

And then the thing was cracked open its mouth much farther than any mouth should be able to open. Wider and wider, until the jaw was gaping and the throat was yawning open.

For the first time ever in his entire short life, Lane felt scared. He felt absolutely terrified. 

“Wait, wait!” he pleaded. “Please don’t! You can’t do this!” 

The android didn’t seem to be listening. 

With one arm, it pinned Lane’s shoulders to the brick and with the other it stretched out one of his legs. Before Lane could plead with it further, the android clamped down on his thigh with its teeth, tearing through the cloth, plastic, metal, and skeleton like it was nothing. 

Lane had never felt pain before. 

He had never felt _real_ pain before. 

He had bumped a knee here and there. He had knocked his hand on a corner every once in a while. He had pricked his finger and dropped boxes on his toes while he had been working. All of that felt like a distant memory compared to what was ripping its way through his system now. Lane wasn't even conscious enough to scream. 

He went limp, and through hazy vision, he watched the android bring his detached leg up to its mouth, ripping through it as it dismantled it for parts. It drank the thirium down, adding to the mess that was already inside it. Once Lane's leg was in pieces, the android turned to the rest of him with a greedy look in its eyes. 

Lane didn't even have the strength to crawl away. 

He had just enough time to bring his hands up in front of his face to hide his eyes, before the android pounced again. 

One of Lane's arms was ripped off, the pain making him see stars. He could feel every bone of plastic and fake synthetic muscle tear under the pressure. The shoulder detached completely with a pop that was underwhelming. 

The android shredded this limb just like the other, adding the parts to its collection. It eagerly bent back down over Lane, apparently undecided what else it wanted to do. 

Lane slumped back against the brick and begged himself to bleed out faster. He wanted the thirium to pump out of his body as fast as possible so he didn’t have to be awake for what came next. He didn’t even have the energy to try to escape. 

The android grabbed him around the head and pulled him up. 

Lane dangled limply. 

The pressure right behind his eyes began to grow and grow and grow as the android squeezed. It felt like his eyes were popping out of his head, bulging like they were about to be pushed out from the inside.

Tighter and tighter. 

Lane didn’t even fight. 

The android was beaming at him, like it was proud of what it was doing. 

Lane felt his skull give out with a crack and a pop. He stayed awake, somehow. He was still conscious as the android dropped him and bounced around his limp body excitedly. It must think that it had finished the job. 

Lane was still awake. 

The android leaned over him, and with fingers too long to be normal it prodded at his chest, and he couldn’t do anything in retaliation. They poked down from his collarbone, finding his ribs. They pressed against the center and tested the strength of Lane’s sternum. He couldn’t do anything. Even if he wanted to, his primary control center--his brain--was damaged and the signals wouldn’t even make it to his limbs. 

He wanted to scream. To shout. 

He was still awake. 

He was still awake! 

He couldn’t do anything.

The fingers pressed harder, and the pain bloomed like a flower right over his heart. His crying reaction must be broken, because Lane wanted to sob in terror, and he couldn’t. 

With a crack and groan, the plastic of his chest gave out. The android gurgled in glee, wedging its other hand into place and prying Lane’s chest open like it was a seashell. Lane never realized how hot thirium was when it was being pumped through his body. It burned in his throat as it bubbled up his throat and into his mouth and then down his chin. All he knew was pain and pain and pain and pain. 

Lane was still awake. 

The android ripped through his organs, stuffing them into itself like it was a starving predator. It worked its way up from the intestines to the makeshift stomach, the liver, and the fake lungs. It drank the thirium as much as it could, dunking its head into Lane’s cracked-open chest.

Lane.

Was. 

Still.

Awake. 

His thirium pump was the last thing to go, and at that point, Lane felt more dead than alive. Even when the pipes disconnected with sickening pops, he was still awake long enough to watch the android eat the very last part of him that mattered. 

Lane shut down permanently a few moments later, thanking someone he couldn’t see and didn’t believe in as all his systems finally gave out.

He wasn’t alone in the dark, as the android began pulling apart the rest of his body to harvest the parts. But Lane didn’t have anyone to hold his hand or tell him goodbye. He had never wanted those things or understood why anyone would, until his LED shuttered and then went dark.

The drainage pipes would run blue the following morning. 

The water would carry a distinct thirium tinge that everyone would recognize and everyone would ignore. Maybe, if they were lucky, a few nuts and bolts would be washed out too, giving some hint as to what had been killed. All of it would just make them clutch their friends tighter and avoid going out after dark.

Eventually, the thirium would evaporate, and everyone would go back to ignoring the problematic signs of destruction and death. 

One more android would be missing and no one could care enough to look.

Everyone would just whisper about steering clear of the sewers and not going out at night. The androids that were smart listened and obeyed. The androids that didn’t, were gone a couple nights later anyway. Something was killing the androids, but no one cared enough to ask why.

**Author's Note:**

> hey, I'm on tumblr @manuscript-or


End file.
